Find more about dinner combined with these topics:
- organic (11)
- comfort food (9)
- healthy (9)
- vegetables (6)
- vegetarian (6)
- quick & easy (5)
- soups (4)
- soup (3)
- PASTA (3)
All About "dinner"
The Soup of 1000 Vegetables
This is the method from an old Marcella Hazan minestrone recipe, and it's an economical use of your time, and also a great way to get lots of flavor into the soup, since everything gets to sauté for a nice long time. A really good bowl of soup is less of a recipe than a formula. And the formula is this: a beany something + a starchy something + a tomato something + loads of random veggies + broth. You begin sautéing whatever onion/garlic type thing you're going to use, and then you prep the veggies one at a time and add them to the pot and stir them as they're done.
Read MoreKickin' Collard Greens
If you like greens you will love this recipe. The bacon and onions give them a wonderful flavor. Add more red pepper for a little more spice.
Read MoreSmoky Veggie Quesadillas
Vegetables, smoky-sweet from the grill and zingy with lime juice, transform simple cheesy tortillas -- comfortingly familiar to children -- into something sublime. Other fresh, seasonal, vegetables, such as eggplant or fennel, would make a lovely addition to the line-up here. And do try to hunt down the chipotle peppers, which add their own delicious hit of smokiness: they're available canned, in the Mexican foods aisle, and you can puree the entire can and store it in a jar in the refrigerator for instant flavor-boosting. (But if your kids are spice-shy, stick with the paprika.)
Read MoreHashed Potatoes with Greens and Cheese
The familiar yum factor of fried potatoes and melted cheese just might persuade your family to give greens a chance -- and because it's all so perfectly mixed together, they will just have to. Plus, this luscious hash -- with a side of fried or scrambled eggs, if you like -- feels an awful lot like breakfast for dinner, which everybody loves.
Read MorePortuguese Kale and Potato Soup
Don't call this Caldo Verde, or your Portuguese grandmother will tell you that the broth should only be made of potatoes and the sausage should only be chorizo. That's okay. It doesn't need to be authentic -- it just needs to taste great. And boy does it. Filled with deep green kale (of the I-bought-it-but-now-what? variety) and skin-on spuds, this is soup at its most delicious and nourishing best. And the bites of smoky sausage will appeal to even the smallest skeptics.
Read MoreOrange-Scented White Fish with Caramelized Fennel
That sounds fancy, right? It's a way of describing how something the kids may never have eaten (fennel) is going to persuade them to love something they may never have liked (fish). Do you know fennel? The bulb is crisp and white, like a pale, overgrown celery bottom, and it smells yummily like licorice. It's delicious raw -- let your kids crunch on some while you're making dinner -- but caramelized until it's meltingly sweet? It's out of this world. Fish can be hard on the budget, but this dish is so packed with flavor that you can plan on small servings.
Read MoreCorn Chowder
This is the quintessential one-pot meal. Creamy, smoky, sweet, it's a sure winner. As far as children are concerned, corn is less a vegetable than a kind of honorary pasta: its only real flavor is a kind of bland, Frito-y sweetness, and it also benefits from summery associations with picnic tables, long, late twilights, and dripping butter. This soup can also be deliciously meatless -- just sauté the onions in a knob of butter and proceed with the recipe. You could even try grating a little smoked cheddar on it.
Read MoreDinner Beans
This is a real workhorse of a recipe: a cheap, virtually instant supper that is yummy and nutritious. I have always felt profoundly nourished by an honest plate of beans and rice, but you may want to make the beans and scoop them up with warmed tortillas or wrap them up with cheese into plump little burritos. Of course, if you need to make these beans this minute and have no smoked anything in the house, you can add cumin or regular paprika or both, and they will still be very good.
Read MoreCarrot Salad
This nearly-instant recipe for Carrot Salad is infinitely adaptable: you can substitute lemon juice or vinegar for the lime juice, sugar for the honey, and tamari for the fish sauce, you can omit the peanuts, you can use your favorite green herb (honestly, in the winter I often use celery leaves from the inside of the bunch, because that's what we have), and you can even add a splash of olive oil if the salad tastes too pickle-y to you, though I like the clean flavor of the oil-free version.
Read MoreSoy-Glazed Tofu
Ah, tofu. We eat a lot of it. It's inexpensive, it's incredibly good for you, our kids love it, and you can treat it like a blank canvas. The trick is to use tofu's mild sponginess to your own advantage, preferably by impelling it to soak up a lot of salt and butter. Hence the following, which is our current go-to recipe, and we eat it at least once a week. Allowed to brown in a pan with soy sauce and lemon juice, the tofu gets crispy-edged and tangily addictive. Just be sure to buy extra-firm tofu, since any other style will fall all to pieces in the pan -- especially "silken tofu" which has the texture of jellied library paste.
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